Going Fast to Go Slow
This is Clouds Form Over Land, weekly writing about resilience, imperfection, and our relationship to the earth.
Last New Year’s Eve, we were 50 miles offshore, crossing the Gulf of California — the waters between the Baja peninsula and mainland of Mexico. Fireworks exploded on the horizon over Mazatlan and the wind shifted into a more comfortable sailing angle around three in the morning. The new year and all its twists and turns was officially underway.
Our plan was to sail 7,000 miles to the Chesapeake Bay before hurricane season in June of 2022. This represents 70 days of continuous 24-hour sailing, not including the weather, mechanical failures, tourist attractions, national paperwork, and other tangents of navigating the tropics.
The New Year’s crossing was one of our first large leaps. We had sailed slowly from San Francisco to San Diego between May and July of 2021 while balancing my desk job and final boat prep. We spent November and December exploring both sides of the Baja Peninsula, an area that almost everyone recommended staying in for months or years. This crossing marked the end of sailing with buddy boats as our schedule pushed us onwards.
Our friend Jen spontaneously extended her travels to join the crossing — immediately putting a new intention of prioritizing fun over work into practice. The extra hands extended our watch schedule to four hours on and eight hours off. What luxury!
We headed straight across the sea, and sometime after turning south along the coastline, a gray booby caught up with us and rode on the radar for nearly 24 hours.
We arrived in La Cruz, a small town outside Puerto Vallarta, after four nights and five days. This part of the world is a haven for people living on sailboats. After two months in the desert, it felt like an oasis with its palm trees, farmers’ market, bustling city square, and community of sailors. Each morning begins with a radio net to request and offer assistance and report on arrivals, departures, and gatherings. There was a nautical swap meet, free exercise classes, activities for kids, and even meditation delivered over VHF by Dahlia. I could certainly see why people decided to stay awhile. Historically, even nomads went in large groups.
Around this time, friends, Facebook comments, and dock strangers alike began telling us to slow down. Some scoffed at the idea of covering so much water before the next hurricane season. Others told us to stop focusing on the destination and live in the moment. This stream of unsolicited advice has been one of our biggest surprises out here. It felt a bit like people were saying, “you’re doing it wrong!”, when in fact we were enamored with doing it all, for any amount of time, and in a bit of disbelief that it had all come together.
We had a daunting task ahead of us and had sailed enough to know to expect the unexpected. We went fast, knowing something was bound to snag us. Engine troubles and the timing of the Tehuantepec winds delayed us for a month in La Cruceita, Mexico. The availability of propane slowed us in Golfito, Costa Rica for a week. The line for the Panama Canal was another two weeks.
The Panama Canal is a wonder of the world, a feat of engineering, a collaboration and a tragedy. For as long as people have sailed these waters, they’ve considered the possibility of this 55 mile shortcut through dense jungle, versus the 12,000 mile sail around South America. Over the course of 15 hours and 55 miles, we traded the Pacific for the Caribbean. Sailors before us have described transiting the canal as a threshold and it felt like one for us too. Suddenly the rest of the trip seemed surprisingly straightforward, and we didn’t quite want to turn the corner north yet. Three new priorities beamed in: have fun, don’t get in the way of a hurricane, and don’t run out of money.
The canal became the divider between going fast and going slow.
The magic of the jungle caught us for six months and the islands for two more.
We pitched in our handy-people skills for room and board and surfed more stable Wi-Fi to take on freelance work. The slow down delivered this newsletter and capacity to share learnings from rainwater, sand flies, sea turtles, SCUBA, mildew, homesickness, yogurt, quilts, diesel, and a piano. Thank you for reading it.
Voyaging on a small boat requires some serious striving to get to where you want to go next and complete openness to forces outside your control. Going with the flow, so to speak. Our surroundings continuously knock our sandals off and it's a practice to take in all the wonder.
Without the guardrails of a destination, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to jump in. Of the global few that take a trip like this, the majority do so after their life’s work is complete and they are ready to retire. Others go to find a sustainable life at sea, often welcoming eyes and ears into their vessels in the form of YouTube to make a living off their lifestyle. Still others go and proclaim they’ll keep it up until the money runs out. We had something else in mind: a walkabout of sorts before settling into a new chapter of life that we wanted, but weren’t quite ready to start.
When we were thousands of miles from loved ones and sailing further away, it was a comfort to know our True North — which actually is more like a smile created by going south and east before turning north.
Every moment of the last twenty months has been part of “the trip”, which is quite a long vacation by United Statesian standards. I feel lucky to still be stringing together the skills, resources, presence, and imagination to do this.
This New Year’s has a similar mix of certainty and possibility. We have about 2500 miles to go: Cartagena to Caymans to USA. We will sync up with other sailors heading north in the spring, flocking together like strange birds before hurricane season. All signs point to arriving at our destination and figuring out what life looks like there. Gathering paid work, activities, community, and a place to sleep on land. For now, we get to try on city life in Colombia.
This time of year is often marked with shifts, intentions, and resolutions, as well as some skepticism on what will stick. My recommendation? Go at your own pace and keep going.
To say all that another way,
When I take you to the Valley, you’ll see the blue hills on the left and the blue hills on the right, the rainbow and the vineyards under the rainbow late in the rainy season, and maybe you’ll say, “There it is, that’s it!” But I’ll say. “A little farther.” We’ll go on, I hope, and you’ll see the roofs of the little towns and the hillsides yellow with wild oats, a buzzard soaring and a woman singing by the shadows of a creek in the dry season, and maybe you’ll say, “Let’s stop here, this is it!” But I’ll say, “A little farther yet.” We’ll go on, and you’ll hear the quail calling on the mountain by the springs of the river, and looking back you’ll see the river running downward through the wild hills behind, below, and you’ll say, “Isn’t that the Valley?” And all I will be able to say is “Drink this water of the spring, rest here awhile, we have a long way yet to go and I can’t go without you.
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home
In the spirit of slowing down, take a break from your list.
Love this! It's so great that you are taking this — slow — adventure now, and not waiting till later in life. You will never regret having done this! Thanks for letting the rest of us live it through you vicariously.
Beautifully written stories, and Happy 2023 and a year ahead! 💙